by Émile Zola
She had taken both his hands in hers and smiled as she raised her face to his and looked him straight in the eyes, for she was hurt, profoundly hurt, she was so keenly determined that he should like her. He shuddered slightly as he felt her warm breath through his beard, and as she let go his hands she said:
‘Never mind, we’ll talk about that some other time.’
It was the coachman who was sent to the Rue de Douai with a note from Claude, for by this time the footman was already at the drawing-room door announcing that lunch was served. The meal, a particularly choice one, passed off very properly under the cold eye of the domestic. They talked about the vast rebuilding scheme that was causing such an upheaval in Paris, and that led them to discuss the price of land, and from that they went on to discuss the sort of people who have money to invest. But when they had reached the dessert and the three of them were left alone with their coffee and liqueurs, which they had decided to drink where they were, at table, they soon livened up and became as free and easy in their talk as if they had met over drinks at the Café Baudequin.
‘Say what you like, boys,’ said Irma, ‘there’s nothing better than a good laugh and feeling you don’t give a damn for anybody!’
She kept on rolling cigarettes as she talked, and, having taken charge of the nearest bottle of Chartreuse, was rapidly emptying it. Her face grew redder and redder, and her hair more out of control as she reverted to her own natural, amusing vulgarity.
‘I was just going to buy it,’ said Jory, excusing himself for not having sent her that morning a book she had asked for. ‘I was just going to buy it, I say, last night about ten o’clock when I ran into Fagerolles.’
‘You’re lying,’ she broke in curtly. Then, to cut short any further denials from Jory, she added:
‘Fagerolles was here last night, so now you know you’re lying. He’s disgusting,’ she said, turning to Claude. ‘You’ve no idea what a liar he is. … He’s like a woman. He lies for the sake of lying, or for a lot of sordid bits of nonsense that don’t matter anyhow. The truth of the whole matter is this, simply this: he didn’t want to fork out three francs to buy me a book. He’s always the same. Every time he was supposed to buy me a few flowers he’d either dropped them under a cab or there wasn’t a flower to be had in Paris! If there was ever a man who had to be loved for his own sake, Jory’s the man!’
Jory, completely unruffled, simply lolled back in his chair, puffed his cigar and grinned maliciously as he said:
‘Now that you’ve taken up with Fagerolles again …’
‘But I haven’t,’ she screamed angrily. ‘And if I had, it’s none of your business. … Fagerolles means nothing to me, do you hear, but he does know it’s useless to lose your temper with me. Fagerolles and I understand each other; we both grew out of the same gap in the pavement. … Listen to me. If I wanted your Fagerolles, I’d only have to raise my little finger and he’d be there, on the floor, licking my feet. He’s mad about me, your Fagerolles is, mad about me!’
Seeing she was preparing for a battle, Jory thought it wiser to retreat. All he said was:
‘My Fagerolles?’
‘Yes, your Fagerolles! Surely you don’t imagine I can’t see through your little game, the pair of you? He soft-soaping you in the hope you’ll write an article about him; you pretending to be generous and broad-minded and working out how much you’re likely to make for yourself by boosting an artist the public fancies!’
To this Jory could find no answer. He was very annoyed it should have been said in front of Claude, but he made no attempt to defend himself and tried to turn the quarrel into a joke. Irma was very entertaining, wasn’t she, when she let herself go like that, with that vicious glint in her eye and that twist to her mouth that meant she was ready for a row?
‘The trouble is, my dear, that it doesn’t do much for your Titian image.’
Completely disarmed by this last remark, she started to laugh.
Claude meanwhile, completely at peace with the world, went on drinking glass after glass of cognac. Like the others, he let himself glide smoothly through the mist of tobacco smoke into the rising tide of intoxication, that very hallucinating intoxication produced by liqueurs. The talk rambled on for two hours and had reached the subject of the high prices that painting was beginning to fetch when Irma, who had dropped out of the conversation and had been sitting for some time with a burnt-out cigarette stub on her lip, staring fixedly at Claude, suddenly turned to him and asked him, in a dreamy, intimate voice:
‘Where did you come across this “wife” of yours?’
The question did not appear to surprise him; his thoughts by now were completely out of control.
‘She came up from the provinces,’ he replied, ‘into service with an old lady. Not a fast girl, either.’
‘Pretty?’
‘Of course she’s pretty.’
Irma slipped back into her dream for a moment, and then with a smile added:
‘Consider yourself lucky! I thought there were no more girls like that. They must have found one specially for you.’
Then, pulling herself together, she rose from the table, exclaiming:
‘Nearly three o’clock! … This is where I turn you out, boys. I have an appointment with an architect. I’m going to look at some land near the Parc Monceau where they’re building all those new houses. I have a feeling it’s going to be a good proposition,’ she said as they went back into the drawing-room, where she stopped in front of a mirror, annoyed at finding her cheeks so flushed.
‘Going about this house you’ve been talking about, I expect?’ said Jory. ‘Does that mean you’ve found the money then?’
Irma was busy arranging her hair over her forehead, smoothing away the flush from her cheeks, making her face look long and oval again, changing herself back into the auburn-haired courtesan with all the intelligent charm of a work of art. Then, turning her back on the mirror, she answered him with:
‘There now! The Titian’s restored!’
They were still laughing as she shepherded them into the vestibule where, once again, she took both Claude’s hands in hers and, with eyes bright with desire, looked deep into his, without a word. Out in the street Claude began to feel uneasy. As the cold air sobered him up he began to be tortured with remorse for talking about Christine to Irma Bécot, and he swore he would never set foot in her house again.
‘Not a bad sort, Irma, is she?’ said Jory, lighting a cigar he had picked out of the box on his way out. ‘And no obligations, that’s the point. You lunch with her, dine with her, sleep with her, and that’s that. Afterwards you go your separate ways.’
By this time Claude was so overcome with shame that he felt he could not possibly go straight back home, and when his companion, full of energy after his lunch and ready for a walk, suggested going to call on Bongrand, he was delighted with the idea. So the pair of them made for the Boulevard de Clichy where for the last twenty years Bongrand had had a huge studio. Bongrand had made no concessions to the taste for sumptuous hangings and valuable curios which was beginning to prevail among the younger painters. His was the plain, bare studio of the older school, with nothing on the walls but the master’s own paintings, unframed, and packed as close together as ex-votos in a church. The only luxuries he allowed himself were a cheval-glass in Empire style, a huge Norman wardrobe, two armchairs in Utrecht velvet, very threadbare, and a bearskin, completely devoid of hair, which was thrown over a big divan in one corner. One habit he had retained from his Romantic youth was wearing a special costume for working in, which explained why he received his visitors in baggy trousers, a dressing-gown with a cord round the waist like a monk, and the top of his head encased in an ecclesiastical skull-cap. He answered the door himself, palette and brushes in hand.
‘So it’s you! What a good idea of yours to call! I’ve been wondering about you. Somebody, I don’t know who, said you were back in town, so I thought it would not be long before I saw you,’ he said to
Claude, offering him his free hand in a burst of genuine affection. Then, as he shook Jory’s he added:
‘Welcome, too, young pundit! I’ve just read your latest article. Thank you for the kind things you said about me. … Come in, both of you. You won’t disturb me. I’m making the most of every minute of daylight. There’s plenty of time left for doing nothing, now the days are so damnably short.’
He set to work again at once, standing at an easel on which was a small canvas showing two women, mother and daughter, sitting sewing at a bay window in full sunlight. The two young men stood behind him, watching.
‘Exquisite,’ said Claude after a time.
Bongrand shrugged his shoulders, without turning round.
‘It’s not much really. Just something to keep me occupied. … I did it from life when I was staying with some friends. I’m just tidying it up a bit.’
‘But it’s a gem!’ cried Claude with growing enthusiasm. ‘It’s got everything, truth, light, simplicity. Just look at it for simplicity; that’s the overwhelming thing about it, in my opinion.’
Bongrand stepped back at once, half closed his eyes and said with obvious surprise:
‘Is it really? Do you really like it then? … Because when you came in I was just thinking it was downright bad! … Oh yes, I was! I was feeling indescribably miserable, thinking I’d spent the last ounce of talent I ever had!’
His hands trembled as he spoke, for his whole body was in the painful throes of creation. He put down his palette and moved over towards Jory and Claude, beating the air with helpless gestures.
‘It may surprise you,’ he said, for he had been successful from an early age and his place in French painting was now firmly established, ‘but there are days when I question my ability to draw a simple thing like a nose. … Every picture I paint, I’m as excited as the rawest novice; my heart thumps like mad, my mouth goes dry out of sheer emotion. Funk, that’s what it is, plain, unvarnished funk! You youngsters think you know all about that, but you don’t begin to suspect what it’s like. The reason’s simple. If you make a mess of a picture, all you have to do is try to do better next time, and nobody slates you for it. But we old stagers, who have shown what we can do, are forced to keep up our standard, to improve it even. If we weaken we drop clean into an open grave. … It’s all very well being a celebrity, a great artist, but it means sweating blood and still more blood to climb higher and higher till you get to the top; and once at the top, if you can keep on marking time where you are, consider yourself lucky and keep on marking time as long as you can, till your feet drop off, if you must. But once you feel you’re going downhill, let yourself drop, and smash yourself to pieces in the death agonies of your talent that’s out of keeping with the times, your failure to remember how you produced your immortal masterpieces and the staggering realization that your efforts to produce any more have been, and always will be, entirely fruitless!’
His voice swelled up to a roar and a final burst of thunder, and there was anguish in his broad, red face, but he went on talking, striding up and down the room in a surge of uncontrollable violence.
‘Haven’t I told you scores of times that you’re always beginners, and the greatest satisfaction was not in being at the top, but in getting there, in the enjoyment you get out of scaling the heights? That’s something you don’t understand, and can’t understand until you’ve gone through it yourself. You’re still at the stage of unlimited illusions, when a good, strong pair of legs makes the hardest road look short, and you’ve such a mighty appetite for glory that the tiniest crumb of success tastes delightfully sweet. You’re prepared for a feast, you’re going to satisfy your ambition at last, you feel it’s within reach and you don’t care if you give the skin off your back to get it! And then, the heights are scaled, the summits reached, and you’ve got to stay there. That’s when the torture begins; you’ve drunk your excitement to the dregs and found it all too short and even rather bitter, and you wonder whether it was really worth the struggle. From that point there is no more unknown to explore, no new sensations to experience. Pride has had its brief portion of celebrity; you know that your best has been given and you’re surprised it hasn’t brought a keener sense of satisfaction. From that moment the horizon starts to empty of all the hopes that once attracted you towards it. There’s nothing to look forward to but death. But in spite of that you cling on, you don’t want to feel you’re played out, you persist in trying to produce something, like old men persist in trying to make love, with painful, humiliating results. … If only we could have the courage to hang ourselves in front of our last masterpiece!’
He seemed larger than life now, and the lofty studio rang with his voice, as he shook with emotion and his eyes filled with tears. Dropping on to a chair in front of his picture, he asked, in the anxious voice of a pupil seeking encouragement:
‘So you really think it looks all right? … I daren’t let myself believe it does. It must be my misfortune to have both too much and not enough critical sense. As soon as I set to work on a picture I think there’s nothing like it, and then, if it isn’t well received I’m tortured to death. It would be far better to be completely uncritical like Chambouvard there, or else to have no illusions at all and stop painting. … Frankly, do you like this little thing?’
Claude and Jory stood petrified with surprise and embarrassment before such a revelation of the birth-pangs of a work of art. They wondered just at what point of the crisis they had arrived to make an acknowledged master like Bongrand cry aloud in his sufferings and ask their opinion as equals. And the worst of it was that they had not been able to conceal their moment’s hesitation from those great, burning, supplicating eyes, behind which they could clearly discern his secret fear of waning talent and failure. For they knew what was being said about him and they themselves shared the current opinion that he had never produced anything to equal his famous ‘Village Wedding’. Even though he had managed to keep up his standard in a certain number of subsequent pictures, he was drifting towards something far too lifeless and sophisticated. The spark of genius had gone and every work seemed less good than the last. But those were things it was impossible to say, so Claude, when he felt sufficiently collected, declared:
‘It’s the most powerful thing you’ve ever done!’
Bongrand looked at him again, straight in the eyes, then turned back to his picture, looked at it thoughtfully for a moment and, after making a terrific effort with his great, brawny arms, as if he were straining his muscles to breaking point to lift such a very small canvas, he murmured softly to himself:
‘My God, it’s a weight, but it shan’t get me down, not if it kills me!’
Picking up his palette, he found peace again in the first brush stroke, and as he settled to work he rounded his broad, honest shoulders, which still revealed something of that crossing of burly peasant obstinacy with bourgeois delicacy of which he was the offspring.
There was silence for a time, then Jory, who could not take his eyes off the picture, said:
‘Is it sold?’
Bongrand replied in a leisurely way, as an artist who worked only when it pleased him to do so, and never for profit:
‘No. … I’m paralysed if I know there’s a dealer in the background goading me on.’
Still painting, he went on talking, now in a more bantering vein.
‘Painting these days is getting to be more and more of a business proposition. … All this trafficking in works of art is beyond an old stager like me. … Our journalist friend here, for example, handed out bouquets right and left in that article in which he so kindly mentioned me. Two or three of the youngsters he talked about were geniuses beyond a shadow of doubt.’
‘That’s what a newspaper’s for,’ replied Jory, laughing, ‘to be put to good use. There’s nothing the public likes better than having great men pointed out to it.’
‘Oh, there’s nothing more brainless than the general public, I grant you that, and I’ve no obje
ction to your playing up to it. … But I was thinking about the way we started! We weren’t pampered, believe me. Far from it! Every one of us had ten years of gruelling hard work behind him before he could get the public to so much as look at his pictures. … But now any little whipper-snapper who shows he can handle a brush is greeted with all the fanfares of publicity. And what publicity! Alarums and excursions the length and breadth of the country, reputations that blow up overnight and go off with a bang before the gaping admiration of the populace! To say nothing of the works themselves, poor little things, announced with salvos of artillery, awaited with unbridled impatience, a nine days’ wonder in Paris and then they’re forgotten as irrevocably as if they’d never existed!’
‘That’s the case against the Press in a nutshell,’ said Jory, who had stretched himself out on the divan and was lighting another cigar. ‘There’s something to be said on both sides, of course, but damn it all, one has to keep abreast of the times!’
Bongrand shook his head and then retorted, in the highest of spirits:
‘That’s all very well, but nobody these days can splash paint on a canvas without being acclaimed a budding genius. … They make me laugh, you know, all these budding geniuses of yours!’
Then, through an association of ideas, he turned to Claude and, in a more serious mood, said:
‘What about Fagerolles, by the way? Have you seen his picture?’
Claude simply said that he had; but when his eyes met Bongrand’s neither could repress a smile, and Bongrand added:
‘There’s somebody who’s taken a leaf out of your book!’
Suddenly embarrassed, Jory looked down at his feet, wondering whether or not to defend Fagerolles. He must have decided it was to his advantage to do so, for he pronounced in favour of the picture of the actress in her dressing-room, an engraving of which was selling very well, he said. The subject was surely modern enough, wasn’t it? It was nicely painted, too, and in the light colour-scale favoured by the new school. Perhaps one might have wished for a little more power of expression, but you’d got to make allowances for people’s inclinations, hadn’t you, and bear in mind that charm and distinction were not to be picked up at any street-corner?